In this practical speaking and grammar lesson, I teach how to use some very common English expressions that are related to quantity. What is the difference between “a little” and “a few”? Or even the difference between “a little” and “little”? Watch this free English lesson to find out, then take the quiz to test your understanding.

You said:
Because you can’t say “two monies,” you can use “few” or “a few,” because they are only used with count nouns.
– I assume you meant to say: you cannot use ‘few’ or ‘a few’…!

Tuesday, June 29th 2010

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i want you explain about a few, few, a little, and little again.
because i remember that little is negative meaning, all right? why this sentence.ex I have little time for rude people (it’s a positive?)

Thanks for this wonderful lesson. I had few confusions to use the words FEW,A FEW, LITTLE, A LITTLE. U clear them out. But anyway , Would u like to correct my upper sentence which i have write down with word FEW… :) Please RSVP. :)

Thank you so much for this highly informative lecture. But i want to ask you one question and that is you said in the lecture that we cannot count money but when we say that we have one Rupee, two rupee and so on aren’t we counting the money? plz sir reply to my question bcoz it is very confusing. thak you.

Friday, December 25th 2009

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Money is actually a non-count noun. You can count dollars and cents, but you can’t count the noun money.

For example, you can say “one dollar,” two dollars,” but you can’t say “one money,” “two monies.”

You can have “little” or “a little” money, but you can’t have “few” or “a few” monies. On the other hand, you can have “few” or “a few” dollars, but you can’t have “little” or “a little” dollars, because dollar is a count noun.

Dear Alex, thank you for making so easy to understand the diference betwen “few” and “a few”, also “little” and “a little”.
I know that you do not make the rule but for me, and for “aresha” too, the money are the most count-able thing in this world.
Do you have any money, do you have some money let me know how many or how much? At this point it is confused for me.

Friday, December 25th 2009

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The teacher is saying money is general and cannot be counted. But money is made up of dollars and cents. So, a person does not count one money, two monies. But you can count 1 dollar and 2 dollars.
I have a little money. I only have a few dollars and a few cents.

I drank a little water. I drank a few drops of water. I drank a few ounces. I drank a few sips.
When the general term like water can be broken down into small units of measurement, then one can count.

wow! thank your for your useful lesson!! i appreciate it.
i have a quesetion for you..
i took 5 questions after your lesson
but i got a wrong answer.
“She has few ideas.” is this noun” ideas” a count noun?
thank you:)

Tuesday, December 29th 2009

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Ideas is a count noun. You can have one idea, two ideas, three ideas, etc.

hi Alex..
thank you for the lesson…
i want to learn English i hope u can help me..
I’m not good in English actually,so i want to learn English greatly
i hope u can teach me,we can contact with my email..

Hi, Alex!
Can we apply rule about positive and negative sentence(with and without “a”) for 1th and 2th examples:
I read a few pages(fact without emotion)
I read few pages(i want read more and more, I regret, but I must go to work) or
I drank little water(i want drink one more glass)

One comment about the ‘few/a few’ and ‘little/a little’ topic:
Consider these two sentences:
1. There is little merit in your argument
2. Few people would challenge the giant
Can these two statements include nothing/zero in the implied meanings? That is, can ‘little merit’ include ‘no merit’? Same for few.

Hi Alex!Nice to see you again:)i’ve one more question about using “a little”and “little”.For exampla,I’ve seen a nice t-shirt,and i want to buy it,but i havn’t enough maney,and i say:”I’ve LITTLE maney”but if i had enough maney i would say”i’ve A LITTLE maney”-is it correct?

Hi! Mr. Alex this is M.Nasim saying u greetings from Afghanistan. My dear teacher I really appreciate you, and you have a very good accent, therefore, serve us and provide us with ur better English pronunciation.
Thanks
Hope u the straight and the way God likes….

Hi Mr.Alex
You said really brief lesson about a few, a little.I have few questions to you, i hope you would like to answer!Thank you
1. A few is used in special negative for countnoun?example: Can i have a few apples?

Each day is a new experience. I have been using these words/grammar for many years now and never really knew the differences. However, I now do. I feel more educated after going through every lesson here in engVid. I think my spelling and vocabulary are under control but my grammar needs a good polish up :-) You will be delighted to know that you are doing a wonderful job. Wish you all the very best and thank you so much for everything. – Maun

hallo;sir
my name is yara i am a new student i heard this lesson but i got difficulties in second qestion because for me i thought that IDEAS IS NOT COUNT NOUN SO WHY WE PUT FEW NOT LITTLE.THANKS IN ADVANCE

I am afraid,your explanation is not so clear for non-native speakers. I explain in a different and simple way. Few is opposite to many and a few is a little bit more than few. Little is opposite to much, and a little is a little bit more than little.

i cant say thnak you enough for your lessons because is very very usefull to people god is bless you are but please can you some time send for me ask my name is ahmad iam kurdish iraq but live in holand thnak you agine

hello Mr Alex;i am really grateful;but i just want to shed light on this:when we talk about count-nn and the opposite ,i think we say:countable nouns,and uncountable nouns…nout count-nouns and non-count???please give me an answer to that

Thursday, May 5th 2011

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abdel,

it depends who you talk to. :) Sometimes I call them “count” and “non-count” nouns, and sometimes I call them “countable” and “uncountable” nouns. It’s the same thing, and just two ways to talk about the same thing.

when we had this lessons in the school . i was angry from my teacher so. I begin draw in my book and I don’t understood anything .now i understood. Thanks alot . what we can do without you & engvid.com.

thank you for that class,you are a very good teacher,,,,,,i have a problem with a little money or little money:why you say a little money i think you say a few money because you can count the money,,i can say one peney,two peney ,,,three peney,,,please help me teacher in that confusion,,,,,,GOD BLESS YOU

hi teacher you’re very good and clear , thanks a lot for your motivation and explanation ,
i ask you about some thing what i need i’m working at HP company in support technical customers and i always need to improve my English this why i need if possible to do some conversations where you can involve the users (us) to interact with some speech by recordable

Hi, I am a TESL student at the moment and my post-secondary education is in linguistics. We were given a list of “difficult questions students will ask” the other day and little vs a little and few vs a few was part of it. Would you happen to know why we have a positive connotation associated with a few/a little? I was thinking about syntax, but a former classmate of mine suggested it might be related to pragmatics… Thanks in advance!

Hello Alex.Thank you for lessons.I always watch them and nowadays I am able to speak english like Canadian.I have one suggestion for you .Can you explain me the all the signal words in english tenses.if you could I would be very happy

its is superb explanation of few/a few and little/a little .. but there is a question raised in my mind that is ” can we use few/little in negative or affirmative sentences” like i write ‘i have few books’ so can we write this sentence as ‘i haven’t few book’ or we can write this as ‘ i haven’t any books’.

Hi!
My question is: did you think about flower (one flower,two flowers….. quiz point 3) becuse I thought about flower (we use it for baking)
In my case it is correct, I think.
Your lessons are very helpful.Tks.

Hi Alex. I’m from Poland like you. As you know in our language we don’t have a difference between little and few in positive and negative meaning. It’s easy to understand but probably more difficulty to use if I’m not native speaker. Good Luck!

What is the difference in meaning between a little in theses two sentences below: –
I have a little watch
I have a little time
Another question please, Many ELLs, especially those who are immersed in English classes, overuse the expression a lot (of). While this expression is correct in informal language, what are some words or phrases that all students should use to express this same idea in formal writing or speaking?

Thursday, February 21st 2013

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You can’t say ” I have a little watch.” Because , watch is a countable noun.
“I have a little time” is correct. Time is an uncountable nouns.You can’t count the time.
Good days.

Hi Alex! this is my first time! I love Engvid, you’re the best!
I’d like to know what’s the difference between theses sentences, which one is wrong and why.
1)Suppose you’d like to give A LITTLE money as a gift.
2)Suppose you’d like to give LITTLE money as a gift.
3)We had A FEW problems finding seats at the theather.
4)We had FEW problems finding seats at the theather.
I’ll really appreciate if you help me to get rid of this confusion.

Thanks alex :) it was an important lesson… I ask you to do a lesson about economic expressions .. vocabulary … or anything related with economy and economic crisis
It will be a good lesson and I will really appreciate that teacher :)
My regards

Hi, I have one question about noun ”month/s”. What about ”A few months ago” and ”Few months ago”, is it possible to say ”few months ago”? I think the first one is correct and the 2nd one is used in order to talk about months which are left and cannot be used with adverb ”ago”, e.g. ”We have few months to finish our task”, but ”A few months ago I’ve started to learn English.” Is that correct? Thank you.

Both “little/a little” and “a few/ few” refer to a small quantity of non-count and count nouns respectively. I often use “a little” or “a few” when I definitely know I have some and “little” or “few” when I don’t know how much I have. Please correct me if I was wrong. I’m 60 and still learning new things every day.

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Learn English for free with 1240 video lessons by experienced native-speaker teachers. Classes cover English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, IELTS, TOEFL, and more. Join millions of ESL students worldwide who are improving their English every day with engVid.